Hong Kong star Brigitte Lin to be honoured at Udine Far East Film Festival, on its 20th anniversary
The Italian film festival has always showcased Hong Kong cinema, and this year one of its favourite stars is honoured with a six-film retrospective. Also featured is a restored version of Hong Kong director Johnnie To’s Throw Down
Hong Kong cinema has always been at the core of Italy’s Udine Far East Film Festival (FEFF), and this year the event is honouring one of our city’s most famous stars. Screen legend Brigitte Lin Ching-hsia will attend the festival’s 20th edition to accept the Golden Mulberry Lifetime Achievement Award, and the programme also features a six-film retrospective of her work.
In another nod to Hong Kong, FEFF will premiere a new version of long-time Udine attendee Johnnie To Kei-fung’s 2004 judo drama Throw Down, which the festival restored themselves. FEFF, which takes place in the picturesque northern Italian town of Udine, opens on April 20.
FEFF director Sabrina Baracetti says that Lin, who had a successful career in Taiwan before relocating to Hong Kong, where she became famous for colourful martial arts films like Swordsman II in the early 1990s, is well known to the festival’s audiences.
Flashback: Jet Li and Brigitte Lin star in martial arts romance epic Swordsman II (1992)
“She’s mainly famous in Italy because of her performance in Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express,” Baracetti says. “Everybody remembers her as the blonde with the sunglasses.”
